Ever since our smart
maneouvering into the very tight berth which we were allocated at
Quinta do Lorde marina, I had been wondering how on earth we were
going to get out. To our starboard were some vacant finger
pontoons, which was a blessing, but the yacht on the port side of
our finger (we being bows in) protuded into the fairway a good deal
further than us, being much longer, and all of the yachts astern of
us, on the other side of the fairway, were substantial, such that I
doubted that the fairway was more than 35 feet
across. Gulliver G is 32 feet long.

None of this would have been
a problem had the wind been blowing from ahead or had there been no
wind. But it was blowing fairly hard from astern.

In a modern fin-keeler it
would have been possible to reverse the boat swiftly into the
middle of the fairway and then high-tail it out before the wind
blew the bows down on to the neighbouring boat. But in a
long-keeler like Gulliver G, there is no telling
exactly where the boat will go when attempting to reverse and the
tight space left no margin for error. I had visions of our ending
up plastered over our neighbour’s stern, and for good reason: the
conditions and set-up were very similar to an occasion when we left
St Helier in Jersey a few years previously and, after much revving
of the engine and brandishing of fenders, counted our lucky stars
for managing to scrape out by the skin of our teeth, miraculously
without making contact with anything, though leaving a thick trail
of soot in our wake.

As for our exit from Quinta
do Lorde, I had already decided that it would be far better to take
advantage of the vacant space to starboard and warp the boat
around, enabling us to go out forward.

Upon undoing various
bearthing lines, we found that the wind really was rather strong
and even warping the boat around had the potential to get messy.
Fortunately a fellow yachtsman came along and gave us a hand. After
some considerable struggle, Gulliver G was in
the perfect position to motor out. Off we went,
when CLUNK! We had only gone forward by about
eight metres and the engine came to an abrupt halt. Good job that
the chap who had helped us was still on the pontoon as he was able
to assist again as we were blown hard back onto the finger next to
that from whence we came.

The cause of the engine
failure did not require Holmesian powers of deduction: a line (one
of our own, cough, cough!) was wrapped around the prop. As we did
not have our own snorkle and mask, the marina leant me one and down
I went. Fortunately the water was very clear and I had the prop
free of line in a couple of minutes.

Given that the propellor and
I seemed to be in acquaintance on an alarmingly regular basis
(previously in A Coruna, where it had become fouled with marine
growth), the acquisition of a snorkle and mask went up my priority
list by a few places. It is simply not the sort of thing one thinks
to carry in British waters, where the sea is far too cold and murky
to take a dive without full-on frogman get-up.

Finally, we were off, the
berthing master giving us a big wave, watching to make sure that we
were well and truly gone before retreating to the sanctum sanctorum
of his office.

A Whale –
28th October 2011, 1800

A few miles out of Quinta do
Lorde, coming abeam of Ilhas Desertas, I happened to glance behind
and saw a fin not far off. This was not the thin delicate fin of a
dolphin, but the thick stout fin of a much larger creature. A bit
of back broke the surface and there it was: our first whale. Or
some of it, anyway.

So, it was with a degree of surprise that I found
myself saying to Kate “We’re going to have to miss the Ilhas
Selvagens because we’re going too fast – at this rate we’ll get
there in the middle of the night rather than tomorrow
morning.”

The plan had been to stop at the larger of these
two minute islands, nearer to the Canaries than Madeira though
belonging to Portugal rather than Spain, for a few hours. They are
a marine nature reserve, waters reportedly teeming with fascinating
fish and the land home to a beguiling array of birds (which
presumably live off very limited vegetation, the fish and one
another) and two orthonologist wardens (who are kept topped-up by a
supply vessel, weather permitting).

The wardens will only permit one to land if in
possession of a permit, which we had obtained free of charge from
Quinta do Lorde marina. Upon landing, one of the wardens will
usually give a little tour of the island. A number of people had
advised that we stop at the Islands. As one of my old colleagues
put it, “hardly anyone bothers to visit, but when else are you
going to be there?”

Click chart to view larger image.

When, indeed. But
the middle of the night is most definitely not the time to arrive.
The islands are fringed with pinnacle rocks which, as insurance
broker-come-marine cartographer DM Street Jr notes on Imray-Iolaire
chart E2, “are ready to nail a yacht.” DMSJr adds that this has
been evidenced by the many wrecks which the islands have collected
over the years, “including a French tanker.” I still haven’t
figured out the significance of the tanker’s
nationality.

I pictured a darkened land-mass, small but
threatening, scarcely illuminated betwixt the rough dark seas of
the new moon, needle-like rocks lurking mere inches beneath the
broiling surface, all pointing decisively in our direction. One of
these hazards having our name scrawled along it, ready to ‘nail’
us.

I thought of the Black Adder episode in
which Baldrick carves his name on a bullet on the basis that if
everyone has a bullet with their name on it, one could avoid being
shot by virtue of already being in posession of that bullet. I was
not sure whether the same logic could be applied to pinnacle rocks,
but in any event had neither the rock or the tools to hand to
inscribe our name on one.

At 0807 on 29th October we altered
course direct for Isla Graciosa, the eastern-most of the inhabited
Canary Islands. Speaking later to an English family who had
ventured within 800 metres of Selvagen Grande, this was a good
choice. They reported a massive surf around the island, crashing
into the anchorage. Two yachts ahead of them buzzed the anchorage,
but there was no hope of getting in. Another yacht behind them gave
it a miss, too.

The number of yachts nearby in those conditions
belays another interesting observation: perhaps because everyone
thinks that no-one else will bother stopping at the Selvagens
everyone does. The anchorage only holds four or five boats and in
calm conditions, despite it’s remoteness, is apparently often
full.

On the second evening of the passage we had to
resort to ‘mug-shots’ for dinner (packets of dried pasta and
seasoning which you tip into a mug of boiling water) because
messing around with pots and pans whilst constantly clinging to a
grabrail and bracing one’s feet against some part or other of the
boat did not appeal.

The violence of the motion experienced on this
leg of our voyage led me, on the morning of the second day, to jot
some notes and observations on wedges, grabs and braces. Barely
decipherable though the manuscript be in places, I shall transcribe
as accurately as possible –

Wedge, Grab,
Brace

When ocean cruising you soon find that the most
common forms of movement have nothing to do with heaving on lines,
grinding winches or pulling or pushing the tiller. Adjustments to
rig and steering should be few and far between.

No, deployed with far greater frequency, nay
continuously, are the ‘wedge’ the ‘grab’ and the ‘brace’. At the
time of writing (0815, 30th October 2011) I am bodily
wedged into the companionway, one hand half around a grabrail and
half holding my notebook, the other holding a pen whilst bracing
the pad against the edge of the companionway. This pose is
necessary in order to scribe these sentences, which upon future
examination will no doubt prove wholly unintelligiable, because we
keep heeling 20 – 35 degrees to starboard with the odd lurch to
port whilst hurtling through the rough seas at a speed over ground
of more than 6 knots.

I
don’t have an Oxford English Dictionary to hand to corroborate, but
would ascribe the following definitions to these verbs –

‘To Wedge’: to place body
or object (esp. latter) between two or more fixed extrusions in
such a way as to ensure that said body or object is not dislodged
by the ship’s perpetual and often violent motion.

Key use: making tea. In rough
conditions, having sustained a few burns and bruises in the process
of heating water, rinsing one’s mug and finding out a tea bag,
losing one’s beverage all over the floor in the final preparatory
stages of brewing and milking before screwing the cap on adds
insult to injury(ies).

In the picture you will see
that I have found the perfect wedge between the top companion-way
step and a conveniently placed batten. The mug has been known to
remain securely wedged in place here even when the boat is taking
hefty broadsides from the raging seas.

The
Wedge

‘To Grab’: distinguished from
the conventional sense of ‘to grab a chocolate bar/apple/nap,’ here
‘to grab’ means to grasp at or cling onto a rail specially fitted
for that purpose, of which there should be many throughout the
boat. Narrow-beamed craft, like the Nicholson 32, are a much better
proposition than their fat-bellied cousins when it comes to
ensuring that a grab rail is always within easy reach. In the
picture you can see the lower ends of the two grabrails which adorn
Gulliver G’s compnionway.

Key uses:

As part of a
carefully researched, planned and perfectly executed passage from
one part of the boat to another.

In a
panic-stricken last ditch attempt to prevent oneself from being
flung across the cabin and possibly impaled upon some object or
other or strewn in an undignified manner over the leeward side of
the cabin or floor. This second sense is usually characterised by
the grabee flailing their arms like those of a ragdoll being tossed
around by malicious children and will often be accompanied by a
torrent of foul language, though the swearing may come after the
fall, depending on how quickly events unfold. Most likely to be
deployed with trouses down since it is in the act of trying to
dress or undress that the grabee is at his or her most
vulnerable.

‘To Brace’: to airline
passengers the ‘brace position’ is the ridiculous contortion which
they are expected to adopt in the event of disaster befalling the
aeroplane which it was their ill-fate to board. Of course, we all
suspect that as an aeronautical survival tactic the ‘brace
position’ is likely to deliver a success rate akin to crawling
under your dining table in the event of nuclear war.

On a yacht the ‘brace position’ is instinctively
adopted by those in the cockpit when they anticipate that a wave is
about to deluge them or that the helmsperson is about to crash
gybe. In all other cases ‘to brace’ is to deploy a large number of
the body’s muscle groups so as to maintain a particular pose or
stance or to hold something in place.

Key uses: except when perfectly wedged
against the vessel’s pitch and roll, constant. Even when grabbing
one is likely to be using various muscles to brace against some
sturdy bit of boat.

So, there you have it. In order to
ensure safe passage-making with minimal tea loss, remember:Wedge, Grab,
Brace.

Arrival at the Canary
Islands – Evening of 30th October 2011:

One matter on which the Atlantic
Islands pilot book by Anne Hammick and the Imray-Iolaire
chart E2 by DM Street Jr both agree is that Isla de Graciosa, the
eastern-most inhabited island of the Canaries, makes a perfect
landfall, being perhaps the most unspoilt of all of the islands.
Another is that no landfall in the Canaries should be made after
nightfall.

Well, it was still light when we sighted land on
the evening of 30th October. It was dusk when we
rounded the north-east tip of Isla de Graciosa. It was pitch black
as we made our way into the anchorage at Playa Francesca on the
west side of the island. Whether or not we made landfall in the
light depends on how one defines ‘landfall’. Upon discovering that
one or two of the yachts were not showing anchor lights, we choose
to drop the hook on the outer and westen edge of the anchorage,
paying out our full 60 metres of chain in about 65’ of water.
Holding was reported to be good on the sandy bottom and proved to
be so.

It had been a rough and wet sail, taking much of
the weather on the beam, so we treated ourselves to fresh water
showers in the heads compartment. In only 50 hours we had covered
about 280 nautical miles, giving an average speed of 5.6 knots –
pretty damn good for us. Some of the times between GPS fixes show
average speeds of over 6.6 knots. This was all accomplished under
full jib alone, which seemed to be more than enough sail for the
conditions. The passage may have been slightly smoother at times if
we had reefed the jib slightly, but the helm was light and with
bunched-up four and five metre seas on the beam I am not sure that
the passage could have been made much more agreeable. In any case,
speeds such as those are not to be lightly squandered, particularly
over comparatively short distances.

Waking up at Anchor on off Playa de
Francesca, 31st October 2011 (Yachtmasters take note of
the skilfully coiled main halyard!).

Isla
de Graciosa and down to Puerto de Naos – Monday 31st
October to Wednesday 2nd November 2011:

After a week on the highly developed island of
Madeira in the immaculate Quinta do Lorde marina, it was most
pleasant to spend a couple of days at anchor off the almost
entirely un-developed Isla Graciosa. This fair isle does not even
have any macadamed roads.

The island is low-lying and sandy, with four
smallish volcanic cones and many attractive rockpools intersecting
golden beaches. Though popular, the anchorage at Playa Francesca
did not feel crowded. We recognised a couple of other boats from
Madeira, who subsequently also anchored in Puerto de Naos (our next
port of call).

The island is low-lying and sandy, with four
smallish volcanic cones and many attractive rockpools intersecting
golden beaches. Though popular, the anchorage at Playa Francesca
did not feel crowded. We recognised a couple of other boats from
Madeira, who subsequently also anchored in Puerto de Naos (our next
port of call).

Kate on Isla de Graciosa, 1st
November 2011.

Gracisoa, like the other
islands, is home to many different bird species…

…as well as some pretty impressive
rock pools...

...and rock formations. The cliffs
in the background belong to Lanzarotte.

On the morning of 2nd November we
awoke to find that all vessels were pointing towards Lanzarote on
the other side of the narrow channel separating the two islands,
meaning that our sterns were now towards a lee shore. During the
night the wind had shifted by 180°. Time to haul anchor and ship
out.

After much of flipping of decompression levers, a
timely reminder to wire in the special cranking battery which had
been languishing in a cockpit locker since new, the engine finally
fired into life. We decided to take advantage of the strengthening
breeze to practise sailing the anchor out. This was neatly
achieved, though cranking in 60 metres of chain with our manual
windlass almost did for me. Actually, I probably winched in over 80
metres of chain as it jumped off the gypsy a couple of times, with
a good few metres flying back out over the bow roller before the
links caught the cog again; something else for which a solution
must be found. By the end of this cruise, I thought, wiping sweat
from my brow and feeling a degree of envy for those with electric
windlasses (i.e. everyone apart from us), I am surely going to be
as fit as a fiddle, if nothing else.

We ghosted up the channel which separates
Graciosa and Lanzarote under full sail, eventually resorting to
motor sailing. We must have been in a wind shadow cast by the high
cliffs of this end of Lanzarote, for as we rounded the north-east
tip of the island to bear south west down the coast the wind
strengthened considerably, from the west.

By the time we approached Puerto de Naos in
Arrecife it was blowing a strong force 5 on the nose. Suddenly we
came to an abrupt halt, sails flapping as Gulliver
G seesawed in the choppy waters. A larger and faster New
Zealand boat which had been catching up with us for some time
started to come alongside. We wondered how they were still doing so
well when they stalled, too. Both boats had to bear away and use
engines to nudge forward out of the wind shadow, presumably cast by
a distant volcanic cone.

A few moments later we were steaming along again
when the other boat, now off to our port side, started to heel
considerably. Further and further they went. We thought that they
might even get knocked down, but at about 50° over they stopped and
then righted, rounding-up as they came until they went hove-to. The
gust which had caught them must have passed within inches of our
bow. We didn’t get any of it. Comparing notes with her skipper and
crew over some drinks a couple of days later, we were all in
agreement that we had experienced some particularly peculiar wind
patterns.

It was clear that we could either spend hours
tacking in, or open up the throttle and head directly for the port
entrance. We did the latter.

Puerto
de Naos – 2nd to 18th November
2011:

We were pleased to have arrived with plenty of
daylight to spare. The main anchorage was in a large old dock which
was littered with a startling array of smashed up old yachts, many
which appeared to have been abandoned on their moorings (“Puerto de
Chaos,” I thought). Amongst the jumble of wreckage and decay,
cruisers lay to anchor. We found the holding to be very good,
Gulliver G not budging an inch despite the wind shifting
by about 180° during our time there and some strong gusts blowing
through. It is evidently patchy though, as a few others had to
re-set.

Our pilot book quoted one skipper
who described Puerto de Naos as “very safe, but grotty.” Prior to
our arrival I had wondered whether for “grotty” I could read “oozes
quaint rustic charm.” Once we got there, I realised that this was
not the case and the depressing thought occurred to me that Puerto
de Naos was something of a yacht graveyard. I attributed such
negative thinking more to tiredness than the surroundings and sure
enough all seemed much better by the light of the next day. Which
was fortunate, as we ended up staying there for somewhat longer
than the couple of days we had planned.

With the wind blowing from the south west on the
2nd and 3rd November, Puerto de
Naos offered far better protection than anywhere else around
Lanzarote. The wind remained fierce for several days, slowly
veering to north east, with a large depression forcing the closure
of ports along the Spanish and Portugese coasts. We were told that
our lovely anchorage off Playa Francesca now had five metre swells
rolling into it. The coastguard put out a warning that a merchant
vessel’s lifeboat had been washed clean out of its lashings and was
bobbing around somewhere out there, a significant danger to
shipping. A new found affection for Puerto de Naos strengthened
with the wind.

Gulliver G anchored in a tight
spot. Being small has its advantages.

Arrecife

With a few exceptions where the artisan still
plows her or his trade, high streets in the UK tend to fall within
one of three categories: the dead, the dying, or the homogenous.
The latter will invariably contain a Clarks shoe shop, a Superdrug
pharmacy, a Costa or Starbucks coffee house, a Wetherspoons pub, a
Greggs bakers (selling delicacies of which a single mouthful will
exceed one’s annual quota of salt, sugar and saturated fat), a W H
Smith, branches of one or two of the national banks, a post office
(possibly closed-down) and some sort of discount place where
Woolworths used to be, as well as maybe a Poundland or 99p Store
and a mobile phone shop. Depending on the local demographics it is
possible that there will be a Waterstones, though a remainder book
shop is more likely and no book shop more likely still. There will
be some clothes shops, the branding of which may be mercifully less
predictable but is likely to include an Evans, River Island and/or
Zara.

To some this may sound like a grim portrait of
modern Britain, but let’s not get sentimental. The homogenous high
street thrives because it has adapted to what the British consumer
wants. According to that impeccable market barometer, supply and
demand (though which drives which can be difficult to detect), this
varies little from one locale to another.

There is an international dimension to the law of
homogenity, I realised as Kate and I strolled down the busy high
street in Arrecife, the main town of Lanzarote (laid out behind
Puero de Naos), passing a Clarks, a Zara and a couple of branches
of Santander.

To remind us that we were in Spanish territory
the latter featured posters of Formula 1’s Fernando Alonso
(Spanish, driving for Ferrari) instead of the posters and life-size
cut-outs of Lewis Hamilton and Jensen Button (both British and
driving for McClaren) which fill every available inch of space in
the UK branches. Additionally, odd snatches of Spanish could be
heard in the balmy evening air which was otherwise filled with
English.

At least we had found the nice part of town, we
mused, as we strolled out along a sympatherically restored
breakwater, past an attractively lit fortification dating, I
presume, from the early days of colonisation about 500 years
ago.

Earlier in the day we had walked around to the
commercial port (whose main occupant was a Thomas Cook cruise
liner) where began a Kafkaesque search for the frontier police.
Having spent four nights already in the Canaries without actually
clearing in (we later learnt from an update of the pilot book that
yachts are not supposed to anchor off Gacisia unless they have
obatined permission 10 days in advance), we were keen to do so
mainly in order to be able to clear out when the time came to head
on down to the Cape Verdes, the advice in the Pilot being that
checking in at the Cape Verdes is made easier if one has an
official-looking checking out document from the last port of
call

We spoke to the various port and police officials
whom we encountered along the route of our exploration, being
directed hither and thither until at last we alighted upon a firmly
locked door bearing the emblem of the frontier police. Kate
observed that a window around the back of the building was open.
Breaking into the police station seemed like a Bad Idea, so we gave
up on that particular quest. In the end, we never did check in or
out of the Canaries, but this was not a problem in the Cape Verdes
as we have EU passports and the Canaries are, after all, part of
Spain and therefore the EU.

Micromegas
5

On the afternoon of the
10th November I went in search of water. There is
no fresh water in Puerto de Naos, but my attention was drawn toward
some tallieres (workshops) on the end of the main dock. Rowing
across in the tender, I was surprised to find myself in a thriving
wooden boat builders. They allowed me to fill some jerry cans,
though the practise was clearly not encouraged. I later learnt that
this was because they are trying to discourage the liveaboards, of
whom there are several in the harbour, from coming in search of
water, all of the water being delivered to the workshop by
tanker.

Outside the workshop I met identical French
twins, whom I had seen around the port (wearing identical
clothing),
Emanuel and Maximilien Berque. They were working on their tiny
little catamaran, Micromegas 5, which they had designed
and built themselves. They planned to sail her across the Atlantic
and back, whereupon she would become the smallest ever ‘proper’
sailing boat to sail across and back with two people, at an overall
length of 5.3 metres.

The twins explained that they do not class the
‘micro-craft’ that have been across the Atlantic as ‘proper’
sailing boats as they are really just buoys which drift across with
wind and current (still quite an achievement in my
book!).

Emanuel and Maximilien hold a number of world
records already. A few years ago they sailed across the Atlantic in
a 4.8 metre craft with no navigation equipment at all. Not even a
compass. They are both very strong astro navigators, evidently, for
they arrived in exactly the right place on the other side. As they
modestly put it, they were merely using techniques used by the
Phoenicians in 3,000 BC. But, in doing so, they set the record for
the smallest craft to have sailed across the pond with two people
on board (and probably the only vessel to have made the crossing
without any aids to navigation).

On Micromegas 5 they have one hull each,
with barely space to lie down and no protection from the weather on
deck. ‘Going on deck’ essentially means sitting up on one’s bunk
and sticking one’s head through the hatch. Sounds like quite a
comfortable arrangement (imagine sailing across the Atlantic
without having to get out of bed!), but these positions are very
exposed in strong winds, rain and rough seas.

Micromegas5 has no centreboard
or keel, the hulls only being about as deep (from deck to bottom of
the hull) as the freeboard (distance from the deck to the
waterline) on Gulliver G, which itself is only about half
that of most modern boats. If Gulliver G is a wet boat
(when the weather gets up, particularly if on the beam, we get a
plenty of it in the cockpit) Micromegas 5 must be
soaking.

The twins carry 50 litres of fresh water each and
no cooking equipment. They live off something called ‘gofia’, a
starch product derived from maize widely available in Spain and the
Canaries. They assured me that mixed with a bit of water and with a
bit of banana mashed in the resultant dish was so delicious that
having it for breakfast, lunch and dinner for weeks on end is a
luxury. Recounting this conversation to others that evening it
became aparent that the twins had been extolling the virtues of
‘gofia’ to everyone they met.

We looked at gofia in the supermarket. Kate eats
slodgy stuff like porridge, but I’m more a sandwiches kind of man
and will take some more convincing before approaching a bowl of
‘gofia’ with anything approaching enthusiasm.

I mentioned to the twins that we had already
stayed in Puerto de Naos for somewhat longer than
expected.

“Ah,” said Maximilien (at least, I think it
was Maximilien), “you must not rush. It took us four months to get
here from France. One month in Spain because the winds were blowing
the wrong way. A month of fog in Portugal. You move on when you are
ready, not before. This is the way.”

One record the twins are clearly not going for is
anything related to speed. But their sentiments accord with what
everyone else says: timescales and plans are flexible. Sometimes a
bit of bad weather comes along or something goes wrong with the
boat and an unexpected delay of a few days or weeks occurs.
Everyone accepts it as a part of the cruising life.

The Engine

Why the extended stay in
Puerto de Naos? Basically, it all came down to one thing: the
engine.

On Tuesday 8th
November we decided to move on, but when it came to starting the
engine all it would do was turn over very sluggishly and not get up
anywhere near enough speed to fire. Even flipping a couple of the
decompression levers up made little difference to the cranking
speed.

There was no doubt that low
battery voltage was not helping, so we borrowed a generator off
another boat to give the batteries a good charge whilst I went
about cleaning up all of the electrical connections.

Eventually we managed to
start the engine with the generator connected and it seemed to run
reasonably OK for a couple of hours, though on a couple of
occasions the revs would randomly drop down before coming back up
again.

The next day the engine again
had difficulty starting so I tried cleaning the air filter and
changing the fuel filter, as well as leaving the genny on the
batteries for a few more hours. The starting problems persisted and
I began to wonder whether I might need to employ the serices of the
local Yanmar agent, which was (very fortuitously) located only a
couple of hundred yards away. The thing was, I really did not want
to have to go spending more money.

Between tinkering with the
engine and socialising with other cruisers the weekend was soon
upon us. We’d had the engine up and running a couple of times and
it seemed that once it had fired up it would run fairly smoothly.
Sunday was looking like a promising time to move on.

On
Sunday morning I pushed the starter button and… nothing. Not even a
click or a clunk. I checked over all of the
electrical connections, but it seemed pretty clear that the problem
was the starter motor and that a visit to the Yanmar agent was now
unnavoidable.

14th November rapidly turned
into one of those Mondays when one wishes they had stayed in bed. A
miserable drizzle set in early, to coincide with some workmen
turning up to dismantle the knackered old dinghy dock: the first
stage in a €14m EU-funded project to turn the old port into yet
another marina.

We found another place to
land, which involved scrambling up a load of rocks.

The Yanmar agent was well and
truly closed.

We took the starter motor to
a couple of other places, who advised that we needed to go to the
Yanmar agent. Never mind, we thought. We also had three weeks’
worth of laundry to take to the laundrette in town.

They too were closed and were
not due to reopen until 1700!

Having lugged the starter
motor and the laundry around town, we returned to the Yanmar agent.
Mercifully, an engineer had arrived.

Knackered old dock – entirely dismantled by
the time we left.

After carrying out some tests on the starter
motor with the engineer which involved him applying a multimeter to
the motor whilst directing me to touch bits of wire to some battery
terminals, producing a spectacualar array of sparks (Kate
maintained a safe distance), he advised that we should leave it
with him for further inspection.

The next day we paid another visit to the Yanmar
agent. The starter motor was pronounced dead. A new one would cost
about €400 (versus €438 to have the old one rebuilt), plus a bit
extra for express delivery. As the alternative was a further delay
of a week or so, we paid the extra.

The next day (16th November) there was
still no starter motor, but we were assured that it would arrive
‘manyana’. Which it did, sexy, shiny and sparkling new. In contrast
to the rest of our engine.

New starter motor to the right, remnants of
the old one to the left.

On the afternoon of 17th November I
fitted the new starter motor and cleaned up all of the electrical
connections throughout the circuit between battery and engine
(again!) until they really glistened and gleamed. I
pressed the starter button with trepidation. The engine turned with
reluctance and… Nothing.

It wouldn’t fire.

“Never mind,” I thought, “let’s bleed the whole
fuel system again, including fuel return lines and injectors and
see what happens.”

I did just that and… It worked! Goddamnit, the
engine started! Not only that, but it ran smoothly for a good
couple of hours until we shut it down. It smoked quite a bit, but
as the smoke was grey I put this down to the fact that I had just
washed the air filter so it was still a bit damp, causing the
engine to struggle for air and thus pump out some unburnt fuel with
the exhaust. Some black gloop appeared in the pan under the sump,
but without further inspection I decided that it was most likely
water from the exhaust system and that I simply needed to tighten
the jubilee clips at some point.

Finally, we would be able to
move on! Despite my initial misgivings about it, after more than
two weeks at anchor in Puerto de Chaos I had formed quite an
attachment to it. It was free and our anchor had not budged an
inch, despite only having a chain scope of about 2:1 down. It was
nice to have stayed somewhere in the Canaries where there were
still a lot of local businesses (including a number of really old
fashioned chandleries, more on which below) and characters with
whom we would exchange greetings. I could not help but feel some
misgivings about the planned new marina and the resortification
which will no doubt follow.

In certain lights, Puerto de
Naos was even quite pretty.

Gulliver G silhoueted
before the setting sun whilst at anchor in Puerto de Naos,
16th November 2011.

Southwards – Friday
18th November 2011

The next morning, 18th November, we
set out for Rubicon, deciding that as we would be arriving after
1700 we should anchor off a beach around the corner of Pointa de
Papaguya before heading into Marina Rubicon for some much needed
fresh water the next day.

We had to motor most of the way. After a couple
of hours the oil pressure buzzer started sounding in a state of
alarm. The wind had picked up to force 4/5, so we cut the engine
and sailed whilst I took a closer look at the gloop under the sump.
It was oil. Hell and damnation!

I tipped two and a half litres of fresh oil into
the crankcase. On restarting, the engine sounded much happier and
no alarm sounded. I decided to forget about the latest mechanical
setback for the time being, so long as the alarm did not sound and
the engine ran well.

The bit of coast to which we were headed was a
natural park, with several sandy beaches and no buildings in
sight.

It was a beautiful sunset as we anchored off the
beach in twenty feet. Only just off the beach. Indeed, we
were so close in that we swam ashore to check the lie of
Gulliver G before swimming back to the boat as the sunset
strengthened to a pure gold behind her.

In the evening the swell picked up as the wind
backed slightly. Within seconds of pouring a glass of wine it had
sploshed all over the saloon. Fortunately for the furnishings it
was white.

Making dinner involved a lot of hard work,
bracing and wedging on Kate’s part, whilst she was feeling a little
off colour after almost two and a half weeks in Puerto de Naos
where Gulliver G had remained rock-steady no matter how
hard the wind blew. I decided to leave the washing up in the
sink.

To Marina Rubicon – Saturday
19th November 2011

Gulliver G’s rolling and pitching grew
worse during the night, the bow snubbing noisily at the anchor
chain a few feet from where we lay (or rolled) in the forepeak.
This reminded me of why I really needed to rig a snubbing line – a
stout rope which gives some slack on the anchor chain so that the
rope absorbs the impact of the bows rising and falling rather than
vessel and crew regularly suffering the impact of the chain coming
taut and the sound of it scraping over the seabed.

I am not sure that either Kate or I got much
sleep that night as the motion was simply not conducive to dropping
into a deep slumber. By 0800 on Saturday 19th November
our stern was pointing increasingly towards the beach. Time to
bail.

The engine started, Praise Be, and we were soon
rounding the next little point, from which the bay fell in to a
massive complex of apartments and villas – a far cry from the
near-deserted sandy beaches of the national park only a few hundred
yards behind us.

After Gracisoa and then Pureto de Naos and then
the National Park, Marina Rubicon loomed like an oasis in the
middle of a desert (absent of) western civilisation.

The marina was built only about 15 years before
our arrival and the best of Lanzarote’s hotels and apartments have
appeared around it over the intersceding years, all well
proportioned and lansdscaped. Behind the narrow strip of
whitewashed abodes facing onto the massive marina, the barren land
rises to a volcanic cone of 607m.

It transpired that this was the German end; a few
evenings later we strolled along the promenade to Playa Blanca,
which is unmistakeably the English end with lots of overweight
people, various shades of white and lobster showing between
ill-fitting holiday clothing, browsing the tat shops amidst the
fish and chip restaurants and a Burger King.

Kate lamented the fact that we had not eaten out
in Arrecife as all of the many restaurants lining the waterfront in
Marina Rubicon clearly cater to the tastes and desires of the
English and German tourist: steak, pizza, pasta,
burgers.

New development to the left, natural park to
the right.

Gulliver G scrubbed down and
berthed in Marina Rubicon.

Marina Rubicon – Saturday 19th
to Sunday 27th November 2011

The original plan had been to head to Las Palmas
on Grand Canaria to carry out some important jobs to finish
preparing Gulliver G for serious offshore cruising. With
strong winds forecast and blowing for the days following our
arrival we decided to stay put and crack on with the work at Marina
Rubicon instead.

The marina had a good chandlery, but we
discovered that the prices for many items were far higher than
those in Arrecife (often double or more), which features a number
of old fashioned chandlers. These are typified by a small shop
space out front with vast store rooms behind the counter shelved
floor to ceiling and holding just about every no-nonsense nautical
bit or bob conceiveable.

At first I had not been enamoured
with the chandleries in Arrecife, being used to the Solent-style,
where everything is attractively arranged in the shop in sparkling
packaging, allowing one to browse at leisure and generally end up
buying a lot more than the one screw which had precipitated one’s
patrionage.

Kate pointed out that the
Chandleries in Arrecife are run along the lines that chandleries
and hardware shops in the UK would have been fifty or sixty years
ago, when the customer would have gone in and explained what they
wanted to the knowledgeable person behind the counter who would
then retrieve the item in question from the cavernous depths of the
stores or would maybe advise a better solution.

There do remain a number of good chandlers in the
Solent; the best are not the massive ones but those which are run
by experienced sailors and boat owners, such as Arthurs and YouBoat
in Gosport.

We considered that if the
chandler’s prices in Marina Rubicon seemed incredibly inflated,
then the same would be true of the chandleries in Las Palmas,
widely publicised in the yachting press as being ‘well stocked’,
‘large’ and with ‘staff who speak at least three or four
languages.’ We found ourselves wishing we had bought a 45lb CQR
anchor which we had seen in Arrecife for €90 against €148 for a
35lb CQR in Marina Rubicon.

So it was that on day four or five
in Marina Rubicon (it is very easy to loose track of dates when
cruising) we found ourselves hiring a car, which enabled us to tour
the entire island of Lanzarote before returning to Arrecife to
stock up on the various items which we needed to complete our work
on Gulliver G. These included that lovely 45lb CQR and
various shackles, chains and lines.

In the two most old-fashioned
chandleries we found language to be no barrier, even though no
English was spoken at all (and we can, embarrassingly, count our
Spanish vocabulary on one hand), as the staff were very
accomodating. In one we were able to convey that we were after
chain (spelt ‘Chaine’ but pronounced very differently to the
English) by drawing a picture of a few links. In another, S H
Duarte (est. 1946) we sought nylon rope for our old 35lb CQR, which
was to become our second anchor, and were led to one of several
huge and labyrinthine store rooms where resided any number of 200
metre coils of white nylon 3-braid in diameters ranging from a
quarter inch to the sort of thing used to secure large merchant
ships to the dock. We bought a single length of just over 50 metres
of rope (it being priced by weight rather than length), for
attaching to 10 metres of 8mm chain for our second
anchor.

On this return to the chandlers of
Arrecife my eyes were more open and I was absolutely staggered by
the sheer quantity of stock carried, all in the store rooms, not
much in shiny packaging. These chandleries clearly catered
primarily to the needs of local fishing boats, as the pricing
reflected.

During the week spent in Marina
Rubicon we –

Very securely
mounted a couple of 75-watt solar panels (which we chanced to buy
from another cruiser in Puerto de Naos) on the coachroof using some
ancient teak planking which Kate had the foresight to suggest we
pilfer from the old docks which were being dismantalled in Puerto
de Naos. Obtaining the planks involved a clandestine night-time
mission in the tender. The plan had been to mount the panels on a
stainless steel arch over the pushpit, but to have the arch
fabricated would have cost a fortune, added weight high up on the
stern and, worst of all, detracted from Gulliver G’s
lines.

Reconfigured
our battery bank to increase the domestic supply from 115 amp hours
to 280 amp hours in the form of AGM batteries, with a separate 90
amp hours wet lead acid battery for cranking the
engine.

Wired the 150
watts of solar panels (combined output) to the domestic battery
bank, with our massive windgen (capable of kicking out well over
100 amps per day in a force 4 to 5) also feeding the domestic
supply and keeping the cranking battery fully charged.

Had the
supporting arms for the windgen’s pole welded so that they would
remain in place; previously they always fell out of the pushpit
fittings in a good blow, leaving the windgen pole flexing around
unsupported.

Fitted new
navigation lights to pushpit and pulpit, having lost our stern
light in Biscay and the starboard light on entry to the boat hoist
in Marina Secca, A Coruna. Despite being attractively finished with
stainless steel, the new navigation lights from Arrecife cost about
a third of that charged elsewhere for standard ugly plastic
lights (at only €11.50 for each light).

Fitted chrome
catches to the cockpit locker lids. A weight off our minds as the
locker lids were previously devoid of catches and could have fallen
open, allowing the hull to flood, in the event of a
knock-down.

Repaired a
lug on the mainsail whose lashing had come adrift.

Restiched the
cockpit dodgers, sail bag and sprayhood where the stitching had
succomed to UV, saltwater and the pressure exerted by the
wind.

Installed the
new 45lb anchor, screwing new eye-rings into the teak mounts on the
forepeak to lash down both the new anchor and our old 35lb CQR,
which is now our second anchor.

Obtained a
Camping Gaz refill and replenished our freshwater
supply.

Changed the
engine oil and filter; fixed a leak in the fuel line.

To the uninitiated these
‘snag-list’ items may not sound a lot, but they involved working
from dawn(ish) to dusk for several days, the net result being
that Gulliver G could truly be said to be in
full cruising trim with ample ground tackle and domestic battery
power charged by solar and wind, as well as repaired canvas work, a
full compliment of navigation lights (aside from the mast-head
tricolour) and those all-important catches on the locker
lids

New locker lid catch.

Gulliver G now equipped with
wind and solar power generation.

Expanded battery bank - 280Ah in
AGMs & 90Ah in lead acid.

New 45Ib CQR and new nav light.

Onwards from Marina
Rubicon – Monday 28th November

We had intended to cruise
more of the Canaries, but as Kate has pointed out we could fly
there any time for around thirty quid and one marina resort is
likely to look much like any other.

Whilst many of the Canaries no doubt deserve
further exploration, the Cape Verdes are a bit more off the beaten
track and we are keen to say farewell to bad karaoke and (how to
say this without sounding like a snob? Sod it, I can’t…) the
holidayingmasses.

Having completed our work on Gulliver
G all that remained was to give the weather a couple more days
to improve and then, on 28th November, we were finally
able to leave Lanzarotte.

Castillo de las Coloradas just
above Marina Rubicon, built in the mid-18th century to warn of
approaching pirates.